Investment with Impact: Closing the HIV treatment gap

I was pleased to speak at the United Nations this week as part of the Cavendish Global Health Impact Forum. The idea of the forum is to introduce good investment opportunities that have positive social impact with individuals and foundations who want to make a difference. Typically, these are investors who wish to invest in businesses within the health and life sciences, where the financial return is magnified by the social good derived from helping the business venture. This is a criteria well-suited for Cavidi’s aim to help contain the HIV pandemic by creating greater access to HIV-related monitoring solutions.

The Global Health Impact Forum is hosted by the Global Partnerships Forum together with Cavendish Global, The New York Academy of Sciences, and International Telecommunication Union at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Participants are a mixture of scientists and CEOs, carefully vetted and invited to present their case before the investors. I was honored to be included in this select group and proud to represent everyone at Cavidi who has worked so hard to get us to where we are today.

Given the venue, I was pleased to see global health elevated on par with global peace, climate change, and human rights as one of the most pressing issues of our time. Innovation and technology play key roles in making this happen.

As Amir Dossal, Chairman of the Global Partnerships Forum, mentioned in his opening remarks at the event, one of the most critical issues facing the UN, and society in general, is providing global access to healthcare, particularly in developing countries. Mr. Dossal specified the need for technology and training to help medical workers on the front lines monitor and manage disease. I don’t think I could have asked for a more appropriate introduction to my talk and the important work that Cavidi is doing today.

Below is a video of my presentation, where I make the case for the impact that Cavidi and our new automated viral load monitoring platform can make to the nearly 36 million people infected with HIV around the world today, and future generations to come. I would welcome any comments or questions you have about the event or Cavidi’s involvement.

For those who would like more details on the event, you can see the entire Cavendish Global Health Impact Forum 2014 program from this link. And if you would like to know more about our new automated HIV viral load monitoring platform, feel free to contact me.

For over two decades Cavidi has been dedicated to increasing access to HIV viral load monitoring for all HIV-positive patients. Our ExaVir™ Load test accomplishes this by bringing national reference lab quality to the near patient environment. Independent studies confirm that ExaVir Load is as accurate as gold standard RNA-based tests, yet is capable of running in virtually any lab. In fact, ExaVir Load is proven to perform at the District Hospital level where the need is greatest.

To date, over 390,000 ExaVir Load tests have been run backed by governments and major global NGOs in more than 52 countries. But there is still much work to be done. Cavidi is committed to continued innovation in this area in support of our conviction that the time for HIV viral load testing is now